NFTY #24: Stability is usability 🎮
Tracking the adoption of mainstream consumer dApps
The NFTY News is a bi-weekly newsletter exploring one of the unknowns in crypto: What does a mainstream consumer dApp look like? Each issue explores some of the on-going narratives like non-fungible tokens, financial primitives, and prediction markets.
This post will explore some of the most recent communities thoughts regarding consumer dApps, something that is completely in the unknown. So far, we’ve seen pre-sales of non-fungible tokens, but this has only led to failed conversion between speculators and not users.
Most agree that average user doesn’t care about true digital ownership, or decentralization. They want to use something that is uniquely enabled by blockchain or makes it better than non-blockchain equivelants.
So what are the benefits of centralized dApps?
By building centralized applications on an open protocol, you: 1) save on development time & cost by using existing tech, 2) leverage an existing user base, 3) have single-sign on logins for users without signing a deal with the devil.
Let’s take a look at an example of this in action recently…
Coinbase and Circle’s Partnership around USDC.
You can’t expect a child to ride a bike without first practicing with training wheels. Likewise, you can’t expect a user who has never touched crypto to get through the hell-hole of the current Web3 stack to even use a dApp.
Coinbase and Circle have enabled a gateway between the analog dollars and digital dollars while simultaneously complying with existing regulatory guidelines. The CENTRE consortium may have the ability to blacklist, but regulators are still more willing to cooperate when there isn’t censorship-resistance.
What’s more important is that developers can have users directly use and buy in-game items with USDC rather than ETH, becoming less of a speculator and more of a user. With Ethereum dropping from a whopping to $1300 to $200, users refuse to spend ETH on dApps when they can be profiting from the future potential upside. With the inclusion of USDC, hopefully users will think less about second-order price effects of crypto when using applications.
Here’s what else is happening in the dApp-o-sphere:
1. NIFTY Gateway— Send NFTs to your friends & family over e-mail
At ETHSF, we saw Gifty let users send a non-fungible token via text message. Now, you can send them over e-mail. Another great example of using centralized architecture to facilitate the transfer of digital scarcity.
2. Staked Tokens in FOAM as NFTs
FOAM, a proof-of-location protocol, released new information about their signaling system. In FOAM, Cartographers can stake tokens in a Signaling smart contract, representing the demand for more zone coverage in a particular area. Any amount of staked tokens is a Signal, represented as an ERC721, non-fungible token. Users can trade signals, just like an ordinary NFT.
3. Non-transferable NFT Badges — Open Proofs
RamĂłn, Adam, and myself have been thinking about permissionless access and building blocks in the form of non-transferable, non-fungible tokens. Open Proofs is built with OAuth and Meta t/xs in mind so issuers can mint and distribute digitally scarce badges without buying ETH or using MetaMask.
Other good NFTY bits
dApp/NFT Metrics Suck
DappRadar is by no means a CoinMarketCap. Metrics are calculated whenever users interact with the single, original contract address. Additionally, If multiple contracts are created, or some actions are off-chain, DAU might not be calculated correctly.
We can’t use these sites in our research. The team behind CryptoDecks is using Circulating Supply Market Cap (avg price of an item * total amount of items sold) which more accurately portrays the current size of the NFT market.
Native Cryptogames and Business Models
Trading & Collecting won’t make cryptogames “natively crypto”. We need to foster collaborative creatively and sprinkle in financial incentives — forming things like decentralized brands or platforms for global digital scavenger hunts:
dApps can monetize in other ways besides selling their own digital assets. They can become a relayer and be a market maker, or take a secondary t/x fee from the assets they submit to a larger distributed registry. If you’re interested in exploring web3 business models more, Kevin Owocki from Gitcoin has also led a fantastic initiative to explore web3 business models.
If you are working on creative use cases, or working on trying to get more people into crypto and reaching end users using non-fungible tokens, I would love to talk about how I can help. Reach out to me on twitter @flynnjamm, my DMs are always open.
